stay by my side tonight
by operate-her
Summary: there's more to me than what i led you to believe. [FUJI.YUUTA]


I, in no way, claim to own the series Tenisu no Oujisama as it is rightfully owned by Konomi Takeshi and his associates. I do not gain any profit from this publication.**  
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**stay by my side tonight  
**_(how seldom we were here)_

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**don't believe in a word i say...**

When I was fourteen or fifteen, I become accustomed to the frequent visits of Echizen Ryoma and the frequent nights spent alone in the house when you would stay out and seem to never want to come back. I know mom and dad never really approved or got used to your relationship and I still feel as is it's my fault since you told me to keep it a secret. It hurt most when you would pretend I wasn't there but somehow, I knew I deserved it. There was rain and thunder one night, in winter, and you went out; I'm sure you would have wanted to be home because our new house overlooked an open field where everything seemed to fall into place and you always took one too many pictures whenever he did.

After Seigaku, you hardly touched your tennis racket.

Your friends said that you were a wasted talent and you would tell them that they were wasting their time. You, briskly as you packed one suitcase full of summer clothes and film cartridges: "I'm sure if you knew love like I knew love, then you would understand what I'm doing." I watched you and I started to wonder if this was how you felt when I was at St-Rudolph. I already felt that the house was too big and empty even though I knew that you wouldn't be gone for too long and Yumiko would be home soon. Even when you played pretend, we never seemed this far away

"Aa-hh, Syuusuke," Me, nervous, playing with the hem and stitching of my shirt. "When will you come back? I'm sure mom and dad would miss you lots and Yumiko would miss driving you around the city even though you know how to as well. And they would miss you around." There was a prolonged silence like the ones little kids would have as they waited for another to respond to their thoughts: the unspoken umms and ahhs and tell me your secret. Your bones creaked as you stood up as if you were old and tired of hearing what wasn't being said.

"I'll see you when I'll see you."

_&_

******when everything you ever wanted is —**

There was an awful silence that filled the rundown part of the city. I remember seeing you, a stranger boy who leaned on the sultry wall of the old churches with a cigarette pressed between your lips like a well-kept secret. The smoke condensed around you and almost hid how much you changed. Your hair was frayed in all the wrong ways, your eyes with distant, and your shoulders thin, your fingers bony. You sat as if you could snap at your knees standing up as knobs on twigs would in half.

The rain was as septic as the build-up in your lungs; they were begging you to take their life away and I sat beside you and held your hand. "What are you doing back?" I said angrily, not because you were back but because you were back without any warning and seemingly without any meaning. You didn't answer back and I never expected you to but the way you would shiver would tell me that he was gone and then you came back on the earliest flight home. If you could have taken a self-portrait of yourself at the time, and made it worth a thousand words and more, you would've been an epic novelist. But you weren't and I brought you home. I didn't talk. You didn't talk and you fell asleep from intoxication.

I sat in your room, watching you as you slept somewhere in between. The white lights seemed to hit off your face in all the right places and cast the shadows on everything you were hiding. I began to think about how happy you used to be and how happy everyone was. I became so angry with myself for making and letting you go. I sat there all night and I ignored the worried glances Yumiko would send as she walked by the room. "Is this how you really knew love?" Your back was turned and I could notice you were awake; you probably knew as well, but you feigned sleep anyways.

I'll condense this masterpiece to three.

_&_

******i'll love you in february**

We walked the pier as we listened to the low moans of faraway steamboats, shipwrecked sailors aching for the warmth of their homes that they love and abandoned. Behind the fog, they lighthouse searched for the lost souls at sea and its light seemed to stop for a nanosecond longer when it landed on us. We've become friends again, I guess, or at least become however they describe what relation felt like, even though there is still a gap in our lives that we can't fix; it makes me wonder what you did all those years and, where and how you lived. After all, you left your camera at home.

We stopped and leaned on one of the wooden railings and you held your hand out into the distance as if you were trying to grasp onto something you left behind for too long .The light passed over you as you opened you mouth and I held my breath. "Yuuta," you said, and it sounded as if a stranger spoke in place of you; even those two small syllables were strained and disjunctive. I merely nodded because that was all I could think of doing. "The boats out there; one day, I want to own one, to put my ear against the surface on the low deck and listen to the ocean breathe in its own salt, and maybe I'll do the same. I want to be one of those sleeping sailors who rely on the currents to take them home, because they've lost sight of the North Star, and hope that they'll find themselves on the same dock they left on. None of those men really know where they are going. None of those men are satisfied to where they are. That's why they like the sea. It's a mystery. It's as if a child is learning how it feels to fall in love, with a million of consequences."

I looked out at where your hand pointed and squinted beyond the fog. Silhouettes of boats moved slowly on the calm waters and others replaced them as they left. I tried to understand your analogy of living in a boat to a child learning how it feels to fall in love, but I couldn't and this was something that, no matter how much you've changed, you couldn't lose. "Aa-hh, Fuji, do you mean to say that you — " I looked to my right only to find that you disappeared as I lost myself in what you said. I turned around only to see your retreating outline re-entering the city. I figured you knew that I would eventually understand what you really meant.


End file.
